


(these girls are) better off in my head

by summerstorm



Category: Pretty Little Liars (TV)
Genre: Character of Color, Community: femslash10, Episode Related, F/F, F/M, Gen, Pre-Canon, five things fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-09-05
Updated: 2010-09-05
Packaged: 2017-10-11 11:47:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,208
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/112101
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/summerstorm/pseuds/summerstorm
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Moving on, or five times Alison influenced Emily's decisions.</p>
            </blockquote>





	(these girls are) better off in my head

**Author's Note:**

> For [twistomatic](http://twistomatic.livejournal.com/) in the [**femslash10**](http://community.livejournal.com/femslash10/) exchange. Spoilers for the first half season of the show. Title from Ryan Adams's _These Girls_. Thank you so much to [annemaris](http://annemaris.livejournal.com/) for the heroic last-minute beta job.

**1.**

"That is _so_ boring," Alison says, strutting through Emily's room and dropping down on her bed with a graceful bounce. Emily's mom must have told her to come up.

"It's not boring, it's standard training wear," Emily says. Her smile is abashed, but there's no reason Alison should read it as anything other than amused. Alison has tunnel vision when it comes to clothes: if nobody will stare at you in it, it's not worth wearing.

Emily guesses it works for Alison, and folds her boring, standard-regulation swimsuit into her bag. She's not going to a swimming competition to meet boys. She's going to have a good time and hopefully do a good job, snatch a spot in a podium or two.

"Standard is another word for _let's pretend we don't judge our swimmers by how desperate we are to fuck them_," Alison says, and kneels up over Emily's suitcase, inspecting its contents with a roaming gaze. "You might as well join a religious cult. At least that'd make an interesting What I Did This Summer essay."

It's not like it's news that Alison likes to say things just to shock her, shock them, but no matter how many times she does, Emily never knows how to answer. Her throat feels dry, so she walks around the bed and goes to take a sip from the Diet Coke lying on her desk. While her back's turned to Alison, she undoes and redoes her ponytail twice, just to avoid facing her for a few more seconds.

"That's the last thing on my mind right now," she ends up saying, turning around, and leans back against the edge of the table.

"Spencer's already charting hers out," Alison says, snickering. "I saw it. Her summer schedule is full of little notes on the margins under headings like _what can be learned from this experience_, it's totally, like, void of spontaneity. It's depressing me just to think about it."

Emily offers a small smile. Spencer's their friend. More Alison's than hers—all of them are more Alison's friends than each other's—but Emily always feels uncomfortable when Alison mocks someone in their group. It makes her wonder how many things Alison's told the others about Emily, how many secrets haven't quite stayed just between the two of them. She's sure the big, important things are safe, because they're Alison's currency, but there's no telling what she may consider fair game to divulge.

"Still," Alison goes on. Emily busies herself going through her bookshelf, trying to find something to read on the train. "At least she's doing lots of things." Emily holds in a groan as she picks the book with the dullest-colored spine and stuffs it in her bag. "You're taking that to Loser Pool? I'm hurt."

Okay, that book was a gift from Alison. Emily hadn't realized that. Some murder mystery about a 1920s movie star, she thinks. She probably wouldn't have chosen it on purpose, but it's actually a perfect read for a long train ride.

"Well, I probably won't be taking it anywhere near a pool," she tells Alison. It sounds like a weak comeback even before the first few words are out. "Since I'm supposed to train for a competition and all."

Alison leaps off the bed and analyzes Emily's open closet, looking through the clothes she's leaving behind. "How long are you going to be out anyway? Spencer's throwing a pool party in a couple of weeks. I was hoping you'd teach me some moves before that."

It really shouldn't make Emily reconsider her trip, hearing that. She's been looking forward to it all year. Whenever she had a long streak of not being able to improve or even meet her best times, or got fed up with shaving all the time or whatever, she always told herself it would all be worth it if she got her coach's permission and encouragement to compete in the summer. She's not obsessed with winning or anything, but competing has always been her favorite part of swimming.

"I don't have any moves," she tries, meekly. It's not really a lie; Alison's probably thinking about synchronized swimming stuff, and all Emily knows about that comes from the two hours it took her to decide, when she was seven, that waving her butt in front of an audience wasn't for her.

"Techniques," Alison amends. "Breathing tips, all that cool stuff." At Emily's wondering face, she adds, cocking her head like she can't believe Emily's this thick, "So I can testify to the police if a handsome serial killer whose scent I'm on throws me off a boat to drown, duh."

"Is that a movie thing?"

"Yes," Alison answers, but doesn't tell her what movie it is, even though it wouldn't give Emily any sort of advantage. "Are you staying to help me emerge victorious from such a dreadful scenario as I just described?"

Emily considers her options: there's upstate New York and boring, regulation swimwear and people whose only goal is becoming professional athletes. And then there's a whole summer with her friends, and nobody who will give her weird looks if she's calm while they're freaking out, and Alison.

"I'd," Emily begins, then sighs. "I'd have to ask my mom. I can't just—" She stops at Alison's bright, smug grin.

"Already took care of that," Ali says. "It's going to be an epic summer, Em. You can mark my words."

 

**2.**

Emily doesn't know what it is about Alison that compels everyone to follow her, but she thinks it's somehow stronger on her friends. It should be the opposite, but Emily knows she's right: she's seen the way people like Mona Vanderwall act around her, desperate for a conversation or breathing the same air as Alison for a second, desperate for acknowledgment, but once they realize Alison's not going to stop ignoring them, they go on with what Alison calls their pathetic existence. Emily sort of envies that. It must be so much less stressful than actually being known by Alison, feeling like at any moment you could do something to offend her and she'd drop you from her acquaintance and you'd just be... Alisonless.

Emily wouldn't give up Alison's friendship for the world, though, no matter how much it hurts sometimes, because then there are the times when she looks at you across a roomful of people and she smiles and you feel like you're the only person she has eyes for in the whole world, and it doesn't matter that you don't know anyone else at this party or that the shoes you're wearing stopped being comfortable five minutes after you walked out the door, because Alison is opening her way through the dancing, drinking crowd just to get to you.

Alison's more than a little tipsy at this point, and she wraps her arms around Emily's waist as soon as she's close enough, spilling the remains of her paper cup onto the floor, missing Emily's heels by less than an inch.

"Em," Ali says, hands roaming down Emily's back until they settle on her hips, where they continue fidgeting but stay, "Em, Em, you're such a good friend." She manages to make it sound like a lie even though it's supposed to be some sort of drunken display of sincerity. "Do you know that you're a great friend? Always so sensible and attentive and offering a shoulder to lean on—we should go talk somewhere a little more private, hm?"

Emily nods, feeling a little startled, shaken. By the, by the physical contact, she reasons, not because of anything but just because Alison hasn't been as openly affectionate with her as usual lately. And not just with her: she's also been pretty cold towards Spencer, and hugged everyone less. Emily suspects Alison has a new boyfriend—she always seems to take a step back from them whenever she sets her eyes on someone new, like strategizing requires some of the attention she usually dedicates to her friends—but Emily has no way of knowing for sure.

Ali's definitely affectionate now, as they walk up the stairs and find an empty studio. She leans into Emily, warm and trusting and gracelessly, none of them qualities Alison often lets herself come off as, none of them qualities that really apply to Alison at all. They fall together into a couch in the corner, and Alison flings a leg over Emily's thighs, snuggles in close. She's comfortable, light and a little damp with sweat, and Emily can smell her raspberry conditioner now her perfume's worn off. It's nice. It's always nice when Alison comes back to them.

When Ali shifts a little, some of her hair falls over her face, brushing Emily's arm. She's resting her head on the edge of Emily's shoulder, her breath steady on Emily's skin, and now it blows currents underneath her own hair, accidentally tickling Emily. That's why Emily reaches a hand to tuck it behind Alison's ear.

"Don't you hate when boys pull that move on you," Alison mumbles sleepily. Emily smiles; Alison looks beautiful like this, messy and stable at the same time, taking a break from being Alison DiLaurentis and just relaxing next to Emily. After a few seconds, though, Emily starts thinking about Alison and boys—all the ones who've touched her hair like this so Alison could make such a dismissive generalization about it, and the one who's absorbed her time the past few weeks, the one who's had this Ali to hug and kiss probably every day, every day that Emily didn't.

Alison stirs, and Emily's fingers still on her ear. Emily's head is ducked, and she can smell the alcohol in Alison's breath when she adds, belatedly, "Like just because you don't mind them touching your hair means you want them to shove their tongue down your throat or something."

Emily moves her hand to Alison's elbow and leans her head on the back of the couch.

#

Regular Maya is so easy-going, so comfortable in her own skin Emily doesn't really understand why she even bothers smoking anything.

"We all have our demons," Maya says, putting out the match she used to light the joint on her lips and sitting cross-legged on her bed, next to Emily. "I don't want you to feel like I'm pressuring you or anything, so I won't keep asking, but if you want some? Just whistle."

"Whistle?"

"The call of the wild," says Maya, taking a long drag, and it strikes Emily that she really can't tell when Maya's high. Well, there's the smell, the gleamy eyes, the physical signs, but other than that, she can never see much of a difference. She wonders if Maya even feels that different. Maybe it's just vaguely relaxing for her, like a placebo. She doesn't do it that often, and never smokes a lot in one sitting, at least when Emily's around, but she's had time to get used to it. Maybe it really doesn't affect her that much.

Emily hasn't tried it again since the first time, just a drag or two the couple of times Maya's smoked up since then. It wasn't bad, but Emily's coach had the swimming team tested without warning once, and Emily doesn't want to risk being caught with illegal substances in her body for a _not bad_ experience. And she thought Maya might make her feel weird about it, but when Emily turned it down the first time, Maya just looked taken aback for a moment and then said, "Okay, I can understand that," not awkward at all, and asked if Emily was okay with Maya smoking around her anyway.

There's only kind of a trick to it, which is that Emily always leaves before Maya has a chance to get handsy, because even if she can't quite tell when Maya's senses are impaired, she doesn't want anything to happen that Emily can regret and Maya can have forgotten by morning.

 

**3.**

"Hanna must be hyperventilating right now," Alison says, "right into a paper bag," and cups her hands over her mouth to illustrate that. For Emily's benefit, she points her pinky at a corner of Spencer's pool, where Sean is leaning over a girl she can't recognize from so far away. She keeps tilting her head up, and more often than not Sean takes the hint and kisses her.

He doesn't seem to be as interested in the kissing as he is in what he's talking about, and she's giggling and kind of off balance and probably not catching a word he's saying, but Hanna's still—this would still bother her.

"Where is Hanna, anyway?" says Ali, smirking as she looks around. There's a glint of blond hair near the door to the kitchen, and a hint of the pale blue sundress Hanna was wearing.

"We should go see if she's okay," Emily suggests.

"Don't be so dramatic," Alison says. "She probably didn't even see it. She hasn't set foot outside the kitchen all night."

"We should still—"

"Emily," Alison says in her authoritative voice. "She's fine. She'll be fine in five minutes. She's used to this. And I'll never forgive myself if I leave too late for anyone to miss me. Let's go."

"Where?"

"Anywhere," Alison says, grabbing Emily's hand, and Emily stops fighting and follows her.

#

Toby is—Emily's not sure what it is about Toby that catches her eye. They're not even that similar: they both sort of keep to themselves, but Emily wouldn't say that's a compatibility. If two people keep to themselves, it stands to reason they'd stay away from each other.

She knows she likes him, though, which is more than she can say about most of the boys she's talked to in her life, and whatever the girls think, he doesn't know anything about A. Even if he did—even if he _was_—he still wouldn't talk about it, and Emily appreciates that, appreciates having someone she can have coffee with and talk about music for two hours without being interrupted by an impromptu conversation she's already had a thousand times and she has nothing to add to.

And he's _interesting_. He has all these stories about following bands, and stories about the extremes people in this town go to avoid him that should be sad but are actually hysterical, and after a while there are also stories about Jenna, and mentions and little offhand references that make Emily feel like maybe Toby's forgiven them for what happened to her, like maybe Jenna could forgive them too, someday.

Or maybe he's only forgiven Emily, having realized she's not the stuck-up bitch a lot of people assume anyone who ever hung out with Alison has to be. It would be fair, because Emily's only now realizing Rosewood's idea of Toby Cavanaugh disregards all these awesome things that nobody expects from him, things Emily's slowly learning and adjusting her own idea of Toby to.

He doesn't ask for anything personal in return when he reveals them, at least not until this one day, after they have a heated, unexpectedly fun discussion on the validity of including a boyband song in a 90s rock mix.

"It's a nostalgia mix," Emily argues.

Toby laughs and says, "How can you feel nostalgic for this dreck?"

Emily shrugs. "I actually think it's a really good song. Forget the label and the connotations, it's really good," she confesses, but after twenty minutes she gives up, laughing, and goes back to her original argument.

In the comfortable silence that follows, the waitress refills their coffee cups, and then Toby ducks his head and says, "I did see the pictures. In your Chemistry book."

"Oh." Emily sobers up immediately. If he saw them but is still here, with Emily—it can't be that bad, can it? "They were—it was noth—"

"It wasn't nothing," Toby says, turning his head upwards to face her. "You wouldn't have been so intent on hiding them from everyone if they were nothing."

He's doing that intense thing where it feels like everything's going someplace horrible he doesn't actually mean to suggest in his words, so Emily says, "I don't know what you're getting at." She feels ready to bolt at any second. He's just hard to get used to, at least this part of him.

"I just thought you should know," Toby says, shrugging easily. Emily feels her own shoulders relax. "I didn't want to freak you out. Make you more uncomfortable than you already were when I sat down next to you. So I pretended I'd missed them."

"So..."

"It's fine," Toby says, smiling lightly. He really doesn't smile a lot, and sometimes it shows, but it feels sincere this time. "If you want to talk about it—I already know, so it should be easier for you than—this is a bad choice of words, but it should be easier than coming out with it to someone who doesn't expect it."

Emily smiles, biting her lip and looking down, picking at her napkin. "I'm not really interested in—in the person I was—with, in the pictures. I'm not interested," she says, and takes Toby's hand under the table.

 

**4.**

After a head-clearing walk around the block, Alison steals Emily's scarf and wraps it around her head, hiding her hair and most of her face, and slips on a pair of aviator sunglasses she produces from absolutely nowhere as far as Emily can tell.

They slip unnoticed around Spencer's house, looking for the door closest to the staircase. The second they get to her guest room, Alison falls back on the bed next to the window. They all had plans to sleep over tonight, but Emily feels a little weird about going to bed without telling Spencer first, so she stands awkwardly around the door, keeping one hand on the knob, hesitating to close it.

"Come here," Alison says, sitting up and looking directly at Emily. Emily pushes the door shut, but she doesn't move. "I'm tired. Aren't you tired?"

"I guess," Emily says, taking a few careful steps towards the bed Alison's appropriated.

"I need my Emily pillow," Alison says softly, with a look that makes Emily blush and dodge her gaze. Alison's impossible: she'll just as soon ignore you as act like you're the most important person in her life. Like she genuinely loves you.

It's not—it's not like that, not that kind of love. Alison's not like that, Emily knows that. But it's a kind of love all the same.

"I can hear the engines in your head churning," Alison accuses her, more fondly than usual. She lowers her sunglasses before she says, "Just come here."

Emily's scarf is still on her head, and Alison stretches out her neck when Emily stands before her, says, "Can you get that for me? You can keep it when it's off." She winks at Emily, and Emily chuckles.

"Sure."

Alison shifts backwards so Emily can plant a knee on the mattress and unwrap the scarf from an easier angle. Her hair flows out of the fabric in long, smooth waves, bright and frizzy where it follows the silk, and Emily doesn't hold back the urge to brush it down with her fingers. Alison doesn't look like she's in the mood to start a fight, plus it's a perfectly friendly thing to do. Emily would expect it from anyone. Aria does it all the time.

When she's done with Alison's hair, Alison blinks hazily up at her, and Emily's not sure who crosses the distance, but suddenly Alison's lips are on hers, glossy and playful. They lie side by side on the bed, kissing slow and lazy, and Emily keeps her fingers in the vicinity of Ali's neck the whole time, careful not to startle her.

Ali purrs a little when they break away, and smiles as she says, "I'm exhausted."

"Yeah," Emily says. She watches the ceiling as Ali buries her head in the pillow, gets comfortable on her side of the bed, too far for Emily to wrap an arm around her or keep touching her in any way.

She watches the ceiling for a while after that, too. She's too keyed up to go to sleep.

#

After Hanna's accident, whenever Maya invites Emily over for dinner, or suggests she spend the night at her house—"Like, a real sleepover. Just to actually sleep. You're comfy. Not that I would say no to anything else, if you wanted that."—Emily's mom starts talking about Hanna and how is she and maybe Emily should go see her again, sleep in the hospital instead of at Maya's, "You girls should stick together, wouldn't you rather spend the night with one of them?" Even when Hanna's released from the hospital, Emily continues to use her as an excuse. And Emily cares about Hanna, visited her almost every day, and she cares about her friends, too, and her mom _knows_ that.

"You think she knows about us?" Maya says when Emily drops by her house for pizza and a movie.

It's so weird sometimes, being in Ali's old room. She looks around and remembers when Alison lived here, how Emily would have given anything to have a conversation like this with her. It worries her, those times, that maybe the house pushed her into Maya, but everything about them is so different, and right now Maya's trying really, really hard to conceal how much she'd like for Emily's suspicions to be true, and Emily forgets the connection entirely.

"She might," Emily says. She's not sure how she feels about that—she thought she'd panic, but her mom hasn't said anything about it, and if she really wanted to sabotage Emily's relationship with Maya, she'd try to keep them apart from dawn till dusk, and not just at night. And she definitely wouldn't ask Maya to stay for lunch every other week.

When she thinks about it, Emily sees no difference between her mom's behavior when Emily was dating Ben and now, apart from the fact that she's not supposed to treat Maya like she treated Emily's boyfriend, because she's not supposed to know Emily's dating her. In fact, it's almost deliberately similar, like her mom sat down one day and made a list of the things she let and didn't let Emily do with Ben and is now trying her damnedest to apply the same rules to Maya.

"Maybe you should try her now," Maya says. "Call and ask if you can stay the night. It's already pretty late. And, you know. You're tired."

"It's not really that late," Emily says. She hates lying to her mom.

"And you're not that tired?" Maya says.

"I actually kind of am. Stayed up late last night."

Maya smirks as she kneels up on the bed to straddle Emily's thighs. "Think I can wake you up?" she says, inches away from Emily's mouth.

As an answer, Emily tilts her head up, offering her mouth for Maya to kiss.

 

**5.**

She makes it home for dinner. Her dad's out, but the light in the kitchen is on, and she kisses Maya goodnight on the steps leading up to the door, chaste but clear. After a couple of seconds, Maya hisses and hides her head in Emily's neck, saying, "Shit, I just made eye contact." Maya keeps her hands on Emily's hips, and Emily fights the temptation to wriggle out of Maya's hold and panic and run.

"Well, you did say no more secrets," Maya adds, and Emily lets out a relieved laugh. She steals a last kiss before she walks into her house, for strength.

Her mom doesn't say a word about it that night, but the next time Maya asks Emily to dinner, her mom says yes, though she also purses her lips warily and adds, "But you come back home right after. Just because the person you're dating is a girl doesn't mean you're allowed to share a bad with them. Not while I'm responsible for you."

It's the first time she's spelled it out like that, and it's weird, but not as weird as Emily thought it would be. She still wants to run or deny it, tell her mom she's got it all wrong, but she manages to keep the lies in, silently let her mom know she's not misreading anything, because this is important. The girls know, and Hanna's developed a habit of referring to Maya as Emily's girlfriend instead of using her name, which is almost as pointless as Maya's thing for talking about Emily in the third person, saying things like, "I'll have to ask my girlfriend," instead of waiting for Emily's opinion without using the word.

It could actually be a conspiracy. Emily wouldn't put it past them. If it is one, at least it's one in her favor.

But this is her _mom_.

"Thanks," she says in the end, smiling before lifting the phone to her ear and telling Maya.

It's not the big fight she expected, and it's not a long, tearful conversation, but it's _something_. If Emily had to describe it, she'd say it's a step forward.


End file.
